Category: UX UI Design

Call me an old romantic if you want but I would have hoped after all this time of interaction design that some of the more basic usability issues wouldn’t crop up so often – and wouldn’t appear in places where designers really ought to know better. I’ve picked on a few examples here that I just happen to have encountered recently.

I’m asked from time to time who I think is doing really good design and usability and to be honest I struggle a bit. That’s because when things work well you don’t notice. But when there’s an issue, that’s what snags your attention.

Random stuff

It’s a bit ironic I think that an agency that prides itself on good communications should be putting up paragraphs of centred text. Paragraphs should be left- (or right- depending on language) justified as when we’re reading it’s easier to locate the start of the next line. When text is centred we have to hunt around for the next line and it’s harder to read.

Also, the white arrow in the image above the text is moving up and down all the time. It’s distracting and interferes with reading. Best practice is not to use an animation like that or at least have a control to make it stop.

For my sins I am an Arsenal supporter. I recently renewed my season ticket. Whilst I’m a fan of the team I’m not a fan of the site and always expect usability problems. After I had entered and submitted my credit card details I received the following screen.

Here I’m being prompted to check that I’ve entered my card details correctly but there’s no way for me to do that. The card details are not displayed on-screen and there’s no link to them. I had to crash out of the process and start again. By the nature of the site it has a captive audience with no alternative online purchase method. If this were a commercial site with competitors they’d be losing money. It goes without saying that the relevant fields should be re-displayed to allow me to check them.

Here is a fairly typical presentation of a list of credit cards to choose from when paying. The last thing you want is for a customer to experience a problem when they are trying to give you money so every little detail counts.

Choose your payment card…

The problem with this list is that I feel like I have to hunt and peck to find my card. If I have a Mastercard Credit I’ll naturally pause at the first entry of Mastercard Debit, decide that’s not it, and scan the rest of the list. There are three ‘Visa’ entries separated out. Note also the inconsistent capitalisation of ‘Mastercard’ v ‘MasterCard’.

Similar items should be placed next to each other to allow the customer to check between them. ‘Visa’ should be ‘Visa credit’ unless there really are multiple options (which would be better being split out explicitly if so). So the list should be more like this

Mastercard debit

Mastercard credit

Visa debit

Visa Electron

Visa credit

Maestro UK

Maestro International

Solo

‘Debit’ and ‘credit’ are not proper nouns and so are not capitalised.

This approach makes it easier to chunk my task into 1) finding the right category of card 2) finding the right specific card within the category.

If you are going to be vague and specify ‘debit’ but not ‘credit’ as in

Visa

Visa debit

…then the Visa debit should be listed first. People with a Visa debit card will be looking for ‘Visa’ and choose the first item – many won’t see the next entry especially if it’s part of a longer list.

Volkswagen

Sigh. I think car sites in general have a way to go in terms of usability. The emphasis appears to be on making it all look nice but you can’t find what you want. I went to the VW site to look at Polos. In trying to get to some detail I’m offered a choice between ‘Read more’ (button) or ‘Explore the features’ (text link). There is no guidance on what is behind either of these and I’ve not got a clue.

What’s the difference?

Most unhelpfully it turns out that ‘Read more’ is just a short list of awards which would have been better served with an ‘Awards’ link. Going to ‘Explore the features’ takes me to a page with a list of random articles but not a way to explore the features. I genuinely don’t understand why a site like this can be so user-hostile.

Giving up on that path I go to ‘Configure’ in the main navigation and get the following…

Choose your Polo to choose your Polo

In order to configure my Polo I have to choose which Polo I want first! How do I know? I can’t explore the features and I want a Polo with a certain size of engine. How do I know which of these models has the engine I want?

Persevering I choose a model and get to a configurator of a type that I’d expected to get to much sooner. Here’s part of it.

Confusion abounds

An exclamation mark apparently indicates some sort of conflict of choices. The ‘i’ provides more information – or it’s supposed to. There are many items in this list that don’t have an ‘i’ but I really would like to know what ‘Driving Profile Select’ means. And the ‘i’ against the Black Style Pack (why does it all have to be capitalised?) just gives me exactly the same list that’s on the page already.

At this point I give up. I simply can’t use this site for anything other than some surface information about the models available.

British Airways

I was looking at flights to Shannon in Ireland. When I start at ba.com I see this.

I don’t have an issue with the popup – but look at the page behind. It’s an old version of the homepage. When I click continue I get a completely different presentation.

It’s not a big deal (I think) but it can lead to a momentary pause because of the disconnect.

On searching for flights from London to Shannon I get the following popup.

The implication is that if you don’t want to go from or to terminal 2 then you can choose different flights – except you can’t. The only flights you can book here from London to Shannon are on Aer Lingus (now part of the same airline group as BA) and they fly from T2. There are no other choices. I suspect some customers may spend a while hunting around for other choices that they won’t find.

Typically when you’ve chosen your flights the first thing you want to see is the total price. Most travel searches don’t result in an immediate booking as people compare sites, airlines, routes, dates etc. A travel site needs to accommodate both the search and the booking functions. Here’s what I get as a quote page.

There is a replay of my choices at the top which I immediately see which is good as I can check I haven’t made a mistake but the total price is a scroll way down the page. I missed it altogether to start with as it didn’t stand out. I’m also asked near the top if I want to use some Avios (points) to cut the cost but I don’t know what the cost is yet. It seems odd positioning and means I have to scroll the page up and down to compare my options.

Given that I was researching I then wanted to see the cost of flights to Dublin. At the top right of the page there’s a link to ‘change flights’ but this only allows you to select different flights for your chosen route. There doesn’t appear to be a simple way of just changing the route. In fact to get out of the whole process the only thing you can do if you happen to know it is to click on the BA logo on the top left of the page, to which there are no cues. I suspect many people will be opening a new browser tab – or just giving up.

And finally, in confusion…

Qual and quant research are the underpinnings of effective digital design. Things have to look good but a good looking site that customers can’t use to do what they want is merely a sink hole for cash. The research must be done to ensure that what’s going to go live stands the best chance of success and once it’s live the whole thing needs to be monitored to find out what can still be improved.

Having said that there are some things that we know that we don’t need to waste time and money researching. These could be generic things based on human psychology like the fact that movement distracts or it could be something fundamental to an industry like most travel searches are to make comparisons and to get prices.

So why do we still see so many of the same mistakes being made? There are a number of reasons including but not limited to

the need to persuade stakeholders

the designers working on a project are new and themselves need persuading

no good record or access to previous research

loss of expertise within organisations (= loss of organisational memory)

lack of time or money to refine designs

Jared Spool has written about genius design. It’s when the team becomes so expert in a field that they can quickly knock out effective design with less (not none) emphasis on research because they already know many of the answers. That takes a strong commitment to the longer term, building up that expertise, and embedding that process in the organisation. Here’s hoping.

There are many people who can ask questions and get answers by analysing a set of numbers or by interviewing the users of a product. There are fewer people who know what the right questions are that will deliver a deeper level of actionable insight.

Identify the right questions

I recently read a book called ‘Everybody lies’ by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Most of it is a fascinating insight into what lessons can be learned from a really intelligent analysis of Google searches. The contention is that whilst people modify their answers in interviews and on questionnaires to put themselves in a good light they tell the truth in their Google searches. Here’s a quote:-

Early in the primaries, Nate Silver famously claimed that there was virtually no chance that Trump would win. As the primaries progressed and it became increasingly clear that Trump had widespread support, Silver decided to look at the data to see if he could understand what was going on. How could Trump possibly be doing so well? Silver noticed that the areas where Trump performed best made for an odd map. Trump performed well in parts of the Northeast and industrial Midwest, as well as the South. He performed notably worse out West. Silver looked for variables to try to explain this map. Was it unemployment? Was it religion? Was it gun ownership? Was it rates of immigration? Was it opposition to Obama? Silver found that the single factor that best correlated with Donald Trump’s support in the Republican primaries was that measure I had discovered four years earlier. Areas that supported Trump in the largest numbers were those that made the most Google searches for “nigger.”

If someone is racist, likes extreme porn, wants to find out how to make a bomb etc they often won’t be keen to immediately disclose these things to the first researcher who asks them – but they will be honest in their Google search and that dataset can be mined. By looking at searches on ‘where to vote’ or ‘how to vote’ a more accurate prediction was made of voter turnout in specific geographies. In areas in the US where abortion has become harder to access there is a spike in searches for how to do your own abortion.

One thing that’s clear from the book is that the insights didn’t just leap out from the massive dataset. Asking the right questions was critical.

In business I’ve met many excellent competent data analysts who can churn out impressive charts at a great rate. Many of those charts have been completely useless in business terms. If you find someone who understands the business well enough to be able to churn out meaningful in-depth insights then you need to keep them.

Whilst A/B tests are often valuable they are by definition binary. Does the blue or the green button work best? What if a red one would be better? Multivariate testing lets you try multiple variables at the same time but then you need more time and volume to reach statistical significance. So knowing enough to ask the right question in the first place based on previous knowledge and experience can make a difference.

One of the difficulties I find with A/B tests is that everything except the variables being tested tend to be averaged in the analysis. Maybe the test shows that the blue button works best, but hidden in the data is the fact that blue works best with frequent users and green works best with infrequent users. I recall a test done many years ago by a bank who found (once they looked) that the effective colour was different in the morning from the evening. Again, these things won’t just jump out from the data – someone has to think to ask the question.

This doesn’t just apply to data. I’ve written a previous blog post on common errors in survey design. I recall one time as well when we were interviewing customers in Germany on the design of the flight selling system on ba.com. One interviewee was indicating that he thought that design A was better for a particular page than design B. My colleagues seemed to take this at face value but I wasn’t convinced – there was something that wasn’t right. In my view it was obvious that B was better and I thought that we just weren’t asking the right questions. At the end of the interview I went in to follow up. Did he prefer A or B? A was the answer. Which was better? A was the answer. Which one should we implement? A was the answer. Which one was easier to use. B! It turned out that B was easier to use but he liked the look of A. So the action resulting that we nearly didn’t get was to maintain the usability of B and combine it with the visual appeal of A. It may seem obvious in retrospect but it was a good lesson in being clear about the difference between someone ‘liking’ a design (which really doesn’t mean much), or preferring the colours, or finding one easier to use etc. What question is it that you actually want an answer to?

There is currently a debate raging on whether screen time – and how much of it – has adverse effects on children. More data is being brought to bear over the many opinions that are freely available, yet there is still no consensus. The Oxford Internet Institute has recently released a study that found that screen time had little impact on ‘teen well-being’. And the World Health Organisation came out with a report that children under two should have no sedentary screen time at all. As The Verge points out though …the guidelines are less about the risks of screen time itself, and more about the advantages of spending time doing pretty much anything else.

In a recent edition of the BBCs Tech Tent podcast the most intelligent comment I heard from a guest on the show in relation to this issue is ‘I’m not sure we’ve asked the right questions yet.’

When paying by card for an online purchase some sites recognise the type of card from the number. Others ask you what type of card you are using. Here’s a typical dropdown menu asking the customer to specify the type of card.

Dropdown list of credit/debit cards

There’s no apparent order to the list of items – it seems that someone doesn’t really think it matters. However, for those who have a Mastercard credit card there are two issues.

Firstly, since users typically have the attention span of a gnat some people are likely to just register the word ‘Mastercard’ on the first line and select it, resulting in an error on submission.

Secondly, whilst debit cards have the word ‘debit’, credit cards do not. This potentially leads to some ambiguity as to whether ‘Mastercard’ on its own refers to the credit card. It’s left to the customer to make that assumption. Note also that for the debit card it’s spelled ‘Mastercard’ and for the alternative it’s MasterCard. That’s just sloppy and will again cause some people to wonder if it’s significant.

In such a list the debit and credit version should be consecutive e.g.

Mastercard debit

Mastercard credit

Visa debit

Visa credit

Visa electron

Solo

etc….

Doing it this way makes it quite clear what each card is and also maximises the chance that the customer will see that there is more than one option for some card types.

This principle applies to any list that users need to choose from and is relevant to surveys. I once filled in a survey about how I had paid for my car. One of the early options was a complex description of a contract which looked like the right choice. I nearly selected it and many would have, but I scanned through the rest of the list and found another very similar description further down that was actually the correct one. Had the two options been consecutive in the list there would be more chance that users would spot that the first likely option they come across is not necessarily the right one. It would also have helped if the two options had been worded to highlight the difference.

The eight principles

When critiquing or explaining a design it can be useful to reference principles – they provide a North Star that you can fall back on when short of ideas and give a level of consistency to your work. They are not generally a tool for innovation and you can still produce an unusable design when trying to follow them, although it’s less likely if you do follow principles. A colleague who once asked (quite reasonably) for our design principles to be made clear thought that they could provide an algorithm to generate a design or be definitive about whether a given design was the ‘right’ one. It doesn’t work like that.

These are based on some work we did at British Airways with a big shout out to my colleague Lee Head who for many years was the lead (indeed the only) UI designer working on ba.com. Kudos. Lee was instrumental in pulling it all together.

The eight principles are

Design for customers

Design with knowledge

Focus on the task

Make it clear and simple

Make use of conventions

Be consistent not prescriptive

Avoid errors

Use design dimensions

I’m not claiming these are the only principles that you’ll need or that they can’t be improved but they are a useful starting point.

Design for users

For services to be successful they must be designed for the user and their goals. Take satisfaction and emotion into account.

This should be an obvious starting point. Personas can be a useful way of describing the target audience – and there maybe multiple personas. What do your users know or not know about your product? What devices are they using? What are their physical capabilities? How can you personalise the experience and generate positive emotions whilst avoiding negative ones?

Collate all the information you have on users and decide which are the relevant (and prioritised) dimensions. Then let than influence design.

Design with knowledge

Gather information that could improve design solutions. The moreknowledge we have the more likely we are to find a better design.

Start with the objective of the design. It’s remarkable how often you can ask a designer ‘what is this page for?’ and get a blank look. What’s the overall objective of the process, of the page, of the component?

Knowledge of the user and the objective should then lead to content. What content is needed to satisfy the objective?

‘Data driven design’ is an oft-used phrase, and rightly so. Collate existing metrics and research on user behaviour which shed light on what users want and how they want it. These can feed into success metrics. The knowledge doesn’t just have to be from your own organisation – competitor reviews play in here also.

Test early and often to ensure that you know you are doing the right thing, and keep measuring once live.

Focus on the task

Don’t make things hard for users. Break down tasks into manageable chunks and simplify the design.

Have a clear idea of what’s important. Secondary and edge cases may generate a need for additional content and a modified design but shouldn’t distract from the main (user) goal.

User choices and how to progress should be clear and standout, and the consequences of actions should be predictable. Too often I’ve sat frowning at a screen trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do next or how to make a selection. Real-world buttons stand out physically and they should stand out from a design. Flat design is a usability disaster.

On many sites you’ll see paragraphs of text followed by ‘Click here for more information’. Users scan links so they should be stand-alone and ‘click here’ just forces them to read more than is necessary. It can also be problematic for accessibility. Instead use ‘More information about product x’. Don’t embed the links in the middle of text or if you do repeat them away from the text so they stand out.

Only ask for information when it’s needed and don’t ask for it if it’s not going to be used. Provide information only where it’s needed and useful – and in the eyeline, not off to one side. Provide negative as well as positive information. Users need to know what they can’t do just as much as what they can do.

Maintain a ‘scent’ so that users know that they are progressing in the right direction.

I’ve found that for sequential processes such as a checkout, just having the word ‘continue’ on the continue button works better than e.g. ‘go to payment’ or ‘review basket’. It’s simpler, requires no interpretation and is quite sufficient. I would only differently label the final button e.g. ‘Pay now’. This principle may need to be modified if there are multiple possible ‘continue’ paths.

Make it clear and simple

Nothing destroys a considered design approach more than poor layout. A cluttered design is not only hard to use, it reduces satisfaction. We should strive for a clear and simple layout that makes the experience easier and more delightful.

Every element on a screen takes attention away from other things and so has to justify its own existence. Clarity of communication has to be a prime objective. So often you’ll see a useless introductory line or paragraph on a product page along the lines of ‘On this page you’ll find the best products of this type anywhere in the world and our goal is to serve you. See below for what we have to offer’. No one reads that. It’s clutter. Users go straight to the useful content.

The purpose and content of a page should be clear at a glance. Maintain an appropriate heading hierarchy, and don’t use heading styles purely to style the text, as that messes up accessibility.

When you include keywords in links ensure that that keyword is immediately visible when the user follows it so they know they’ve arrived at the right place.

Reduce visual noise – don’t have a variety of fonts, colours, shapes, carousels etc for the sake of it. For gods sake don’t centre long paragraphs of text.

Make use of conventions

Using design conventions can be a useful method of simplifying a design. Use them unless there is a very good reason not to.

You might think that a quirky navigation and unusual interactions reflect your personality or brand – but it would turn users off. The likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple can get away with introducing new standard elements because of their reach. Most brands don’t have that leverage. Users just want to get their stuff done. They aren’t there to admire your design.

There’s a reason for radio buttons, checkboxes and dropdowns all existing. Understand what they are good for and what they aren’t good for. Use them appropriately. You don’t need new methods. Apply this practice to all design elements.

Innovate only if you can prove that users get it and it adds value.

Be consistent, not prescriptive

Develop a pattern/component library and use it consistently. Vary it only if the context requires it.

This needs collaboration between design and engineering. A proliferation of styles either visually or technically hurts the business and the user experience. Have a process and a decision maker responsible for allowing (or not) exceptions to the standard design.

Somewhat ironically, unless a design variation is large, designers will usually spot specific variations more than users, but nevertheless those variations can cause confusion and lead to a poorer impression of your brand.

Consistency applies to terminology as much as visual design.

Avoid errors

Good design minimises the risk of user error. When it can’t be prevented, ensure customers understand what to do to achieve success.

It drives me crazy when I use a form or a process with obscure instructions, instructions in the wrong place, instructions that aren’t needed, poor labelling, unintuitive order of fields and a whole litany of other issues. Then you finally press the button, wait for a long time, and then get an error message that could have been checked inline.

If you do present an error message say (as far as you can)

what has gone wrong

why it’s gone wrong

what the user can do about it

Use design dimensions

There are slightly varying lists and terminology, but much common agreement on the dimensions of design. Using them intelligently will greatly enhance the user experience.

Contrast/similarity

Positive/negative space

Line

Shape

Form

Colour (hue)

Colour value (tone)

Direction

Size

Texture

Grouping/separation (space)

Motion

Take grouping and separation as an example – many times on ecommerce sites I’ve been confused by the prices in a grid layout being closer to another item than the item it refers to.

You can use colour as a guide to product type e.g. electronics are all blue, clothing are all white – so long as it’s not a critical cue that would be missed by those of us who are colour blind.

I very much like Google’s Material Design as it does so much that’s right. The ‘card’ design does grouping and separation well and motion is used to help with usability.

Finally

It’s quite possible that someone else would come up with a different set of principles with different headings or structure – but I’m sure there would be considerable overlap.

The list above isn’t the final answer – it’s just intended to be useful.

In-flight entertainment – a story

Some years ago at British Airways there was a project to design an interface for a new in-flight entertainment system. My then-colleague and friend Mike Lock was project managing. Mike is the real godfather of digital usability at British Airways. Whilst I set up and developed the UX, Design and Research team, I did so off the back of what Mike had already done to sow the seeds of awareness and need. He says I’m too modest, but I call it as I see it.

British Airways’ in-flight entertainment screen

For the design of the IFE interface a small number of companies had been asked to present a concept. At the end of the presentations it was clear to Mike that only company X had grasped the issues around information architecture and navigation, although the visual design was a bit off. He was shocked to hear when going round the table that no-one else favoured company X. All the other (more senior) stakeholders in the room went for a more on-brand visual design. Mike felt overwhelmed – like all the big guns were pointed at him and he only had a cardboard shield to deflect the blows.

‘But’, said Mike, ‘the one you all like does look nice, but no-one will be able to use it. It’s not a design where the usability issues can be fixed – it needs throwing away and starting again.’ Sceptical faces were all he saw, but he kept going. ‘Although the design from company X isn’t quite on brand it is usable, and we can fix the design elements relatively easily.’ The meeting broke up with the stakeholders thinking that Mike didn’t get it, and there was no way they were going with company X. But Mike still wasn’t giving up.

That meeting was on a Friday and the group was going to reconvene on Monday to decide what to do. Mike was desperate to find a way to influence the decision towards the one he knew to be correct. Over the weekend he took the images from the presentations and turned them into clickable prototypes using Powerpoint. It was all that was available in those days. He then videod his mum ‘using’ the two interfaces. This was in the days of camcorders that recorded on tape. She couldn’t use the pretty design but got on pretty well with the from company X.

On Monday Mike played the video to the group. Ultimately he won the argument, company X got the contract and re-worked the design, and it was implemented on many aircraft. It left a bad taste in Mike’s mouth though. He had to work too hard to prove a simple point and taken a load of senior shit for it.

The lessons

Something similar to that scenario has played out again and again over time. There are lessons to be learned.

Firstly you can’t assume that your stakeholders get what it takes for an interface to be usable. It’s one of those contradictions in life – we’ll all swear at an interface that frustrates us, but (some of us) would still build an interface for our own companies that incorporate the same frustrations. It’s human nature – we’re often not aware of the causes of our emotions, and most people don’t analyse exactly what it is that they don’t like about a website or an app. They just ‘know’ that it doesn’t work for them.

Secondly, if you have business people who are (relatively) sane and rational it should be possible to influence their perception of effective design. They do actually want it to work. There are different ways of doing this, and sometimes it depends on the person as to what the best way is. Some people like to review a spreadsheet of analytics following a multivariate test, but usually the best way of snagging a stakeholder is for them to see a real customer being unable to use an interface that that stakeholder thought was ok. It hits at an emotional level that has impact. Get them to watch live research in person – but if you can’t, then show the video. If you can, involve them in the setup of the research so they can’t quibble with the methodology afterwards.

Thirdly, agencies vary in their expertise. Some are better at UI, some excel in IA, some at ecommerce. It’s critical when engaging an agency to make sure they have the expertise to do what the client wants, and to be clear about what success looks like. I wrote another post on why agency/client engagements often don’t work.

The landscape today

Designing for mobile forces the designer to ruthlessly prioritise content and produce a compact design. Users focus more because there’s less to look at, and identify more issues with confusing and irrelevant copy which they would just ignore on a desktop screen. More people are using phones more of the time, but desktop isn’t dead yet. I don’t know if it’s a reaction to compact phone design, but desktop design seems to have gone the other way.

A short while ago I was talking to a senior business manager about her company’s desktop site. It had been designed by an agency and she had complained that there was too much scrolling. The agency had ‘explained’ that it was ‘modern design’. The business manager was right, there was too much scrolling.

It seems to be the vogue to have enormous images, lots of white space, and huge font sizes. If you have an ‘artistic’ site or a particular brand image all of this might be appropriate. However, for most ecommerce or informational sites it isn’t appropriate. Customers want to get in, do their stuff, and get out. They want the experience to be a perfect combination of ease, pleasure, succinctness, entertainment, effectiveness etc. And yes, that does include a site that’s pleasant to look at. But if they have to repeatedly scroll just to find out what’s on offer, or to find the information relevant to them, then it’s not achieving their goals and it’s not helping the company to win their business. There are some sites where I’ll go to read an article and I almost feel like I’ve been punched in the face by the huge font that’s difficult and unpleasant to read.

My perception is that many, if not most agency sites are culprits of implementing a triumph of design over communication. If they built their clients’ sites like they built their own then their clients would go out of business.

The bottom line

I’ve had excruciating debates with got-religion UI designers who can’t bear to see the excellence of their design debased and compromised in pursuit of mere money. They don’t disagree that the design impacts usability – they just think making the design right is more important. I’ve told them I’m not prepared to explain to the CEO that we chose to make lower profits so that we could adhere to the designer’s idea of a nice-looking interface.

I want to be clear that I’m not at all putting down UI. It’s absolutely essential. It’s just not the reason why we do all this work.

The reason for the existence of UX, UI, research, interaction design, information architecture etc etc is to be effective in the mission of the organisation paying for the work to be done, which is usually to make money and/or to communicate. We need to focus on the goals and objectives for the interface, where ‘on brand’ is a primary goal and ‘nice looking’ is a secondary goal.

It all needs to come together. Figuring out what works needs to be based on research, on facts – if anyone can stomach facts in a post-fact world.